GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 480 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 17408 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 68%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a lot (more or less 31%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (31%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.